Arthur Spirling Receives Excellence in Mentoring Award

Arthur Spirling was one of four faculty members to receive this year’s Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award.  The other three honorees were Professors Amanda Claybaugh in English, Angela DePace in Systems Biology, Carol Oja in Music. Altogether, they were among 54 faculty members recommended by their GSAS students in a total of 104 nomination letters.

Each year, the GSAS Graduate Student Council presents this award to one or more faculty members judged by the selection committee to be prime exemplars of what it means to serve as a mentor.  The Council seeks to recognize those faculty members who truly go out of their way to mentor graduate students.  The awards were presented in a Dudley House ceremony attended by winning and nominated faculty mentors on April 4, and have been given each year for the last 14 years. They are named for Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus, Everett I. Mendelsohn, upon his retiring from the Master of Dudley House in 2002.

Arthur Spirling specializes in political methodology, with an interest in applied Bayesian statistics, ideal point estimation and the application of generalized linear models in political science.  His substantive field is comparative politics, with a focus primarily on the United Kingdom.  In nominating Arthur, students consistently cited his dedication — “unique among junior faculty,” said one — to graduate student training and placement. “Like many other PhD students, I have faced many struggles during my years of researching and writing my dissertation,” one nominator wrote. “Throughout, Arthur has been a reliable source of support and encouragement. From the very beginning, Arthur has reached out to me to check in with me about my progress and offer his counsel. He has been the one to raise the toughest questions about my work, but he is also the one to think about many alternative answers to those questions.”

Arthur teaches both undergraduate and graduate methods classes in the Government department.  He is also active in the Undergraduate Research Scholars program.

For more information about the award, please see this GSAS article and the GSC web site.